Yolanda Sonnabend,80

Yolanda Sonnabend, Designer Who Influenced Choreographer, Dies at 80
by Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, November 29, 2015

Eldzier Cortor, 99

Eldzier Cortor, Painter of Scenes From African-American Social Life, Dies at 99
by Elizabeth A. Harris, The New York Times, November 27, 2015

Setsuko Hara, 95

Setsuko Hara, Japanese Star of Films by Ozu and Kurosawa, Is Dead at 95
by William Grimes, The New York Times, November 27, 2015

Joan Duddy, 78

Joan Duddy, Nurtured Dance and Joyce SoHo in Manhattan, Dies at 78
by Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times, November 27, 2015

Raul Rekow, 61

Raul Rekow obituary: Santana's star drummer inspired percussionists across the world
by Alex Pertout, The Age, November 24, 2015

David Canary, 77

David Canary, Star of ‘All My Children,’ Dies at 77
by William Grimes, The New York Times, November 25, 2015

Reasons to be thankful!

I have many things to be thankful for--among them, being so often surrounded by gifted, accomplished artists. This season, I had the great pleasure of moderating BRIC Arts Media's post-show Q&A with choreographer Ronald K. Brown (celebrating his troupes's 30th anniversary) and poet Cheryl Boyce-Taylor. For Ronald K. Brown/Evidence's season at BRIC, Brown and Boyce-Taylor presented a revival of Water, their 1999 collaboration. 

The Q&A followed the performance on Friday, November 13 as New Yorkers were just hearing and struggling to process the horrific news from Paris. All through our conversation, I felt the unshakable force of Ron and Cheryl's groundedness and focus. I was happy that they both emphasized how important it is for young, innovating artists to value and tap the experience of arts elders as they move forward in a field--and a world--presenting numerous challenges.

Movers and Shakers: Dance Activists in NYC
a panel at Brooklyn Historical Society
(photo: Tyrone Z. McCants)

L to r: Jason Samuels Smith, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, AntBoogie,
Tamia Santana, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Camille A. Brown
(photo: Tyrone Z. McCants)

I also had the honor of being invited, by Meredith Duncan, Programs and Communication Manager of Brooklyn Historical Society, and Tamia Santana, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Dance Festival, to moderate their panel on dance and activism at BHS. The panelists? Knockouts, all: Camille A. Brown, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, AntBoogie and Jason Samuels Smith, distinguished in their respective genres of dance and deeply engaged with community, education and social justice.

(photo: Tyrone Z. McCants)

(photo: Tyrone Z. McCants)

Despite a late-fall downpour that kept some people home, we had a good gathering and a rich, wide-ranging discussion touching on the power of the arts to shift the way we think and imagine, the fundamental importance of technical discipline, the role of the body in political action, and the perennial challenge posed by mainstream media and conventional tastemakers and gatekeepers. So often, our talk returned to the imperative that progressive artists just go for it, find their own truths, control their own spaces, creating alternatives in an end run around these barriers. I greatly appreciate the example these artists continue to set for us all.

Finally, I want to thank all of you for your nourishing support over the years. InfiniteBody continues to be here for you, and I hope you will continue to enjoy it and send your friends and colleagues my way.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Love,
Eva :-)

Cynthia Robinson, 71

Cynthia Robinson, Sly and the Family Stone Trumpet Player, Dies at 71
by William Grimes, The New York Times, November 26, 2015

Congratulations to Carla Peterson!

Last evening, our dear friend and colleague Carla Peterson (along with Charles Ruas) was presented with the insignia of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by Bénédicte de Montlaur, Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy in a joyous ceremony.

All photos 

©2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Bénédicte de Montlaur,
Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy,
welcomes guests.

Carla Peterson,
Director of the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography,
accepts her insignia from Bénédicte de Montlaur
in recognition of her international work on behalf of dance artists. 

Carla Peterson spoke of her working class upbringing
and how her parents would have been amazed
to see her receive this honor.

Charles Ruas--interviewer,
literary and art critic, and translator--
also became a Chevalier
for his prolific and multifaceted work.

Choreographer Tere O'Connor was one
of a many notable dance community members
 on hand to celebrate this tribute to Peterson.

The political spectacle of Bread and Puppet Theater

Vermont's Bread and Puppet Theater
returns to New York for a December season.
(photos courtesy of Bread and Puppet Theater)

The Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side. Besides rod-puppet and hand puppet shows for children, the concerns of the first productions were rents, rats, police, and other problems of the neighborhood. More complex theater pieces followed, in which sculpture, music, dance and language were equal partners. The puppets grew bigger and bigger.

During the Vietnam War, Bread and puppet staged block-long processions and pageants involving hundreds of people. In 1974 Bread and Puppet moved to a farm in Glover in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

Read more and connect with Bread and Puppet Theater here. Volunteers are welcome for the theater's upcoming events in New York:

Upcoming shows and art auction 

at Theater for the New City

The Overtakelessness Circus
Saturdays-Sundays
December 12-13, 19-20 at 3pm

The Seditious Conspiracy Theater Presents: A monument to the Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera
Wednesday-Sunday
December 16-20 at 8pm

Bread and Puppet Theater Art Auction (live auctioneer and band)
Friday, December 18at 9:30pm

Theater for the New City
155 First Avenue (between 9th and 10th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Saeed Jaffrey, 86

Saeed Jaffrey, Actor in ‘Gandhi’ and ‘The Man Who Would Be King,’ Dies at 86
by Nida Najar, The New York Times, November 22, 2015

"this is an Irish dance": Jean Butler at Danspace Project

Neil Martin and Jean Butler
perform this is an Irish dance at Danspace Project.
(photos: Ian Douglas)

Jean Butler might still be best known for Riverdance--the global Irish dance phenomenon she starred in with Michael Flatley--but she has moved on to a new level of inquiry in contemporary dance. this is an Irish dance, her thoughtful and poetic performance with cellist/composer Neil Martin at Danspace Project, helps us hear music not only in the duet of instrument and movement but also in the sensitive aliveness within silence, stillness and near darkness.

To make this work, the two artists collaborated through simultaneous improvisation. We read the living record of those explorations as they perform or even just regard each other across space, or as Butler quietly holds the cello for Martin as he busies himself with pushing a white cube a short distance. The warmth of his cello's voice contrasts with her sculpted serenity. Its heartful earthiness creates a trusty base for her still-very-Irish lightfootedness.

In an essay for this production, Butler writes of the supremely controlled form of Irish dancing as "a gesture of defiance," meant to elevate the Irish stereotyped by the English as "uncivilized, unruly, and of questionable character." I tried to understand this notion of physical self-restraint as a form of defiance. As a Black woman, I know how, under similar racist conditions, self-restraint can be a strategy for survival, if a self-erasing one. But an act of defiance? Nevertheless, Butler's birdlike physicality does reveal the powerful presence and strength within cool control, a self-awareness and a witty, mercurial facility that could as readily be turned to battle as to fanciful play.

Frank Conway's set further complicates things, evoking the aftermath of some unidentified disaster the two performers have survived. Upon first entering the church sanctuary and seeing his arrangement, I flashed back to the time I passed through my wife's art studio and closed its door behind me just as its ceiling collapsed.

Aside from a narrow, plain white table and a few white cubes, Conway has spilled jagged chunks of white foamcore down two sides of the floor--heavy piles near the altar steps tapering down into lighter remains and finally single pieces close to the audience. Although Butler and Martin rarely interact with this wreckage, it's hard to not be aware of its presence as they interact with each other.

Are we not all living with the wreckage of past injury and, quite likely in these times, foreboding? And do we not all, despite our first misgivings, hope to move beyond these things and find ways to connect and to heal?

this is an Irish dance continues through November 21 with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

In their skin: BAAD! presents works by men of color

Jonathan González
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Benjamin Lundberg
(photo: Jeca Rodríguez-Colón)

In Our Skin--a one-evening show presented at BAAD! with Pepatián for the 2015 BlakTinX Performance Series--offered a rare and important opportunity. The event focused on works by young male choreographers and performance artists of color--Benjamin Lundberg, Gentry George (who showed several short pieces), Alvaro González Dupuy, Eduardo Fajardo and Jonathan González. The run-on format--two hours with no intermission--should be rethought as it became tedious, poorly serving works presented late in the program. Why not distribute the lineup of artists over at least two evenings of reasonable length--say, no more than 90 minutes--allowing breathing room for both these artists and their audiences?

In a program ranging from Lundberg drawing vials of his own blood to mix with dishwashing liquid as a painting medium (Limpieza de Sangre) to queer chatterbox Fajardo charmingly singing and dancing along to a cumbia hit he later questions for its misogyny (CABARET), George's solos and duets stood out for conventional polish--the look of Ailey crossed with contemporary ballet--and the remarkable facility of their performers. In Our Skin certainly could not be faulted for lack of variety in approach to performance.

Chilean, New York-based Alvaro González Dupuy was, for me, the strongest discovery and pleasure of the evening. In Dame la Mano and i give you my elbow--his duet with equally vivid Emily Smith--stream-of-contact, genial roughhousing and audience involvement yielded unexpected freshness. I would welcome the chance to see more from this mind.

Jonathan González's curious deep divine shows him to be a clean, feline mover with an interest in engaging the possibilities of his environment and messing with the way we understand sound, lighting and the body in theater space. Sorry to say, by this point, the lengthy evening found me feeling captive, low in energy and unprepared to give my best attention. But González--recently seen in Patricia Hoffbauer's Dances for Intimate Spaces and Friendly People at Gibney--has some new projects coming up in 2016. Worth getting on your radar.

Closed. For information on remaining BlakTinX Performance Series programs (closing November 21), click here.

BAAD!
2474 Westchester Avenue, Bronx (map/directions)

Meet Mix’d Ingrdnts, Oakland's all-women street dance troupe

‪Women Dancers Redefine Oakland’s Street Dancing Scene
by Emma Silvers, KQED Arts, November 12, 2015

TONY review: Abraham.In.Motion at The Joyce Theater

Here's the link to my Time Out New York online review of Kyle Abraham's first full season at The Joyce Theater, featuring the New York premiere of Absent Matter.

Our bodies, our business: SLMDances at University Settlement

Candace Thompson of SLMDances
at University Settlement for BodyBusiness
photo ©2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

BodyBusiness--the exuberant, inspired new venture from Sydnie L. Mosley's SLMDances--asks "How can dancers be paid a living wage for meaningful work? How can we transform places of lack in our lives into places of abundance?"

While the first question will require something like revolution, the second gets answered and put into practice this very week by BodyBusiness itself, a dance concert hosted by The Performance Project at University Settlement where Mosley has been in residence. But not just a dance concert. BodyBusiness is a dance physically--and spiritually--nested inside a social, marketing and community networking event ("Marketplace").*  The simple fact that I might have something you need and vice versa is its operating principle and a model for how to survive, thrive and get your work done as an artist in New York or really anywhere.

Katherine Bergstrom of SLMDances
at play with audience members
at University Settlement for BodyBusiness
photo ©2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Opening night found US's Speyer Hall performance space encircled by reps from from several community service organizations--The Field, Pentacle, OurGoods, PURPOSE Productions, among others--the sound system pumping soul and R&B as an audience gathered. Eventually, dancers from Mosley's troupe appeared, casually engaging a few audience members in movement play in the central space as tabling continued on the sidelines. These interactions provided a transition into the formal performance. With tables cleared away, Damel Dieng's video introduced and, with the help of Mosley's entertaining dancers, cleverly illustrated the complex economic issues faced by freelance dance artists.

Unpaid or underpaid. Up to their eyeballs in debt. Working several jobs to support themselves while pursuing an art they love. Statistics stacked against any hope for healthy balance in life, let alone success in their chosen career.

In the following live performance, we learned more about Mosley and her dancers as individuals, their backstories, struggles and dreams. "My folks wanted me off the couch," said Kayla Hamilton. "My mother, she worked too damned hard for me to be just dancing around," said Kimberly Mhoon. "My mother likens my dance career to an abusive relationship," said Candace Thompson.

Most of the dancers are Black women, and Mosley's choreography for this initial segment shows a wry relationship with classical ballet (as skill, as playacting) that is full of charm and mischief.

There is joy and determination and something I can only call being-one's-selfness in every move, and I love how Mosley keeps things continuously on the move. There are bodies in a range of sizes, and so we bid fond adieu to that "mold" that one dancer, Rachel Russell, said she did not fit. Fuck that mold.

The audience participation that follows--which I will not divulge here--gets to the heart of Mosley's whole project. She has a need to see dancers stand in their power (probably more than just dancers, too...but let's start there), and she offers some tools and bids us all use them well and carry on.

*Tonight's Marketplace--open at 6pm and followed, roughly at 7 or 7:30 by the performance--will feature tabling by health and social services organizations, and tomorrow's will be devoted to small businesses.

For BodyBusiness information and tickets, click here. Note: No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Also, with advance notice, childcare is available--which is very cool.

University Settlement
184 Eldridge Street (near Rivington Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

We're doing it again! Not The Master's Tools at Gibney!

I'm so excited that Gibney Dance Center will once again host Not The Master's Tools: Dance Artists Create Alternatives on Monday, December 7. Guess who's presenting and chatting with us this time?

André M. Zachery

Raja Feather Kelly

Jen Abrams

Larissa Velez-Jackson

Remember, hold Monday, December 7 (6-8pm).

These conversations are free and open to all.

Your pre-registration [CLICK HERE] will help us plan for the best space, but walk-ins are certainly welcome. Help us spread the word, and bring your friends and colleagues!

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Thinking with/talking back to Lemon's "Scaffold Room"

Above: April Matthis
Below: Okwui Okpokwasili
performers in Ralph Lemon's Scaffold Room at The Kitchen

musings...about how B/black artists choose quilting/sampling where materials--visual, verbal, aural; humble or dear--are many and close to hand. moms mabley and kathy acker; ben webster and david bowie (totally pimped out on soul train and wasn't even embarrassed). when you unroll and stretch this fabric out its seams run thick as scars. does cold, unforgiving space crush art? or does it set it off like jewels on velvet in vitrine? what's up with footwear for women here: white nursing clogs? patent leather red spike heels? or none at all, just barefoot? admitting guests to nearly-barren space where most must stand for two hours...or so they think. actually starting the performance first and then interrupting to pass out folding chairs? what...hostility? inhospitality? chaos? how is performance like a scaffold--for exhibition, for execution? what is B/black womanhood? janis sang baby i know just how you feel in little girl blue? did she? know just how you feel, i mean? did amy know? what if beyoncé--whose teeny screen image one must bow to see--is actually not the vortex of every last person's universe? which universe are we talking? subtle pauses and tilts of the head, matter-of-fact voice...is okpokwasili artificial, a simulacrum, an impersonation of an impersonation folded in upon herself like nested alternate universes? april matthis singing and mumbling to herself in a distracted, helium-ated voice or screaming in different registers for what seems like ten minutes or six centuries...has she found freedom in the body, meeting it on its own terms...freedom shockingly beautiful and also dreadful?

*****

Conceptual artist Ralph Lemon opened Scaffold Room (multimedia installation, readings and performances) at The Kitchen on October 30 in collaboration with Kevin Beasley, Jim Findlay, Paul Hamilton, Malcolm Low, April Matthis, Roderick Murray, Naoko Nagata, Okwui Okpokwasili, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Katherine Profeta, Marina Rosenfeld, Mike Taylor and Philip White. Performances and readings concluded yesterday, November 10, but the installation remains open through Saturday, December 5  in the 2nd floor gallery. Hours are Tuesday-Friday 12-6pm, Saturday 11am-6pm. Admission is free.

For information, click here.

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Allen Toussaint, 77

Influential songwriter, producer Allen Toussaint has died
by Dominic Massa, WWL-TV, November 10, 2015

Brookie Maxwell, 59

Brookie Maxwell, an Artist and Curator, Dies at 59
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, November 9, 2015

Is it too soon to be thinking about The Nutcracker?

Photos from Dance The World Nutcracker Festival
courtesy of JP Dance Group

Maybe, even though Rockefeller Center's Christmas tree is already in place!

But JP Dance Group wants you to start thinking about its Dance The World Nutcracker Festival, devoted to New York's exciting diversity.  Three programs (December 15-20) will present dance forms from a wide variety of cultures represented in our city--Chinese, Bulgarian, Middle Eastern, African, Caribbean, Mexican and Indian.

For a complete schedule of festival programs, click here. For tickets, click here.

The Secret Theatre
44-02 23rd Street, Long Island City, Queens
(map/directions)

Swallowing her whole: Volmir Cordeiro at Danspace Project

Volmir Cordeiro in Inês
(photo: Cristiano Prim)

One day, I met a woman named Inês. I wasn’t satisfied with just looking at her – I wanted to get closer. I immediately put aside my role as an observer and began to live with this “being of flesh.” It wasn’t enough to capture her; I had to swallow her whole.  -- Volmir Cordeiro

The figure you see in the photo above is Inês.

Or perhaps I should say it is Brazil-born dancer Volmir Cordeiro encasing the being of Inês in his rangy, barelegged body in a study named, Inês, presented by and at Danspace Project with Performa.

That's already a lot surrounding a woman who is not there, and this does not even take into account the audience also surrounding a woman who is not there.

Inêssssssss.  The cry of her name issues from Cordeiro's lips like an invocation of an orixá. Or a viper's hiss. Or a spray of rum from the mouth of a macumba priestess. Or all of these things at once.

Inês lives. Yes, an actual person, a sexagenarian and mom. By word of Cordeiro (and a useful post-show Q&A with Miguel Gutierrez and translator Patricia Hoffbauer), we know two other things: 1) She wants to get on a reality TV show. 2) She has had "a radical amount of plastic surgery," as noted by Gutierrez, to make herself a better candidate for elusive and likely ephemeral celebrity.

We must imagine what she looks like. What Cordeiro looks like borders on the wolfish. And when he strides right up to the edge of the audience's front row, right up to the eyeballs there, he can intimidate. Especially since he holds that place of dominance for a long time. Even when swiveling his limbs, or moving sideways along the row or venturing inside an aisle, he's a force that seems to want to pin you in your seat. You don't know what, in the very next second, could burst from him. And you don't want to know.

In your own head, you're walking on eggshells.

Is that Inês?

If so, she seems unbalanced enough to achieve the reality TV stardom she desires.

He/she is reckless with his/her body--especially when Cordeiro tapes his eyelids shut--in ways that make empathic/empathetic people like me cringe.

Is that Inês?

A useful tidbit from Danspace Project's material on Cordeiro (now based in Paris):

Volmir Cordeiro...is currently working on a PhD thesis on figures of marginality in contemporary dance at Paris VIII University. His studies and time spent in the favelas of Rio with Lia Rodrigues’ company reflect a desire to bring to life those who are “condemned to weaken, disappear, derail.” In previous works Cordeiro has explored the physicality of marginal and underprivileged figures.

Inês fascinates her observers, even as she scares them. How strange that her dream is such a flimsy thing, far flimsier than she herself must be.

Final performance of Inês: tonight at 9pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Melissa Mathison, 65

Melissa Mathison, ‘E.T.’ Screenwriter, Dies at 65
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, November 5, 2015

Dance artists exploring new directions: Thank you!

Many thanks to my excellent guest panelists--Sydnie L. Mosley, luciana achugar and Sarah A.O. Rosner--who shared their experience and knowledge last evening at Gibney Dance. From the centrality of investing in sisterhood and partnering with community, to the courage to claim room in a city's public spaces for the practice of pleasure, to the challenges of funding and marketing an unusually multifaceted project, these three artists offered stories of adventurous questioning and questing that can inspire our own work and lives.

"The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House"

– essay by Audre Lorde, 1984

Artists share alternative philosophies and strategies for working in the dance profession – from making to marketing to surviving in a difficult economy and competitive city. How do we keep body and soul together, enjoy the creative process and move our work forward? Bring your own experiences and questions.

Each panelist will share a brief presentation (10-12 minutes) on an alternative philosophy or methodology that has worked for them or that they are currently exploring. After the presentations, we will open the discussion up to the audience for questions and further knowledge sharing!

Not the Master’s Tools: Dance Artists Create Alternatives will return to Gibney Dance on Monday, December 7 (6-8pm) with a new group of panelists to be announced here within the next several days.

Remember, these conversations are free and open to all. Your pre-registration--via a Gibney Dance site to come--will help us plan for the best space, but walk-ins are certainly welcome. Help us spread the word, and bring your friends and colleagues!

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)